Miranda Forrester

Foundry Seoul is pleased to present Be Like Water, a solo exhibition by London-based artist Miranda Forrester. With fluid lines and a delicate gaze, Forrester composes scenes of everyday intimacy, reflecting upon the serenity found in a free existence beyond social binaries and perspectives, as well as the sense of joy and belonging experienced within a community. In Be Like Water, Forrester’s first exhibition in Seoul, the bodies of water featured in her new works are spaces of intimacy and liminality, inviting freedom, fluidity, and transformation.

Forrester’s paintings capture peaceful, calm moments from daily life, such as people lying in repose, caring for children, or leaning into one another. Depicting intimate and private scenes of women in domestic settings, her work not only recalls the historical exclusion of Black queer women from Western art history but also celebrates the joy and pride of womanhood, as well as the pleasure of being a desiring subject.

The figures in her paintings exist along the boundary of figuration and abstraction, between presence and disappearance, and are often based on real individuals close to the artist. While maintaining their individuality, they form relationships with one another as fluid and ambiguous beings. Forrester also offers viewers the possibility to project themselves into the work, an experience facilitated by the artist’s distinctive material vocabulary, particularly through the painting’s supports. The line between reality and creation is blurred by Forrester’s choice of polycarbonate as her surface, a material recognized for its transparency and rigidity. This unique use of materials subtly evokes complex and nuanced ideas around femininity, gender, and sexuality through materiality, eliciting tender, flowing reflections on identity and belonging. Furthermore, the reflective surfaces and the walls and shadows visible through the transparent polycarbonate canvas add physical depth to the image and allow for a multilayered visual experience.

Forrester constructs her compositions with reference to classical European architecture, experimenting with how freedom, beauty, and the potential for transformation can be visually manifested within physical environments. The ornate architectural elements of the Baroque style, once used to vaunt authority, are recontextualized through her critical lens to reveal a history of exclusion and marginalization. By juxtaposing modes of classical architecture with everyday, intimate scenes of Black queer women, Forrester subverts traditional ideas of spatial or locative significance and suggests new narrative possibilities. In her recent works, the setting expands from private interior spaces to outdoor environments. This shift creates spaces where the figures can commune with elements of nature like water and wind, and more actively connect with one another, opening the potential for freer, more liberated existences.

This exhibition unveils new works centered on the theme of bodies of water, weaving together a rich tapestry of narrative and formal references that have profoundly influenced her, including films by Barry Jenkins and Céline Sciamma, literature by K. Patrick and Julia Armfield, and music by Janelle Monáe. Water, as it is explored in her work, is a site of deconstruction and liberation—a place beyond fixed boundaries or the binary order—where identity and sense are deconstructed and reconstructed, a space of transformation and rebirth. Her paintings depict a world where figures and spaces flow together, interacting beyond existing norms and perspectives. Especially in these new works, she delicately illustrates the processes of self-awareness and emotional connection with others through water as a medium, celebrating the beauty and potential of liberated beings and inclusive communities. Her figures are resting in swimming pools or leaning on one another—moments where openness and vulnerability coexist. The waterside serves as a stage where women, freed from social oppression, encounter their inner selves and explore their identities. Forrester’s paintings unfold a world imbued with warmth, inclusion, joy, and freedom, where her subjects dwell sacredly in their everyday existence and desire. In doing so, she blurs fixed boundaries and invites viewers into a deeper emotional realm.

The exhibition at Foundry Seoul provides a new cultural context for Forrester’s evolving painterly language. It gives space to voices and identities that have long been underrepresented, warmly embracing and commemorating the stories of all those who live and come together in Seoul, a place where newness and diversity can coexist.